It's Not a Sign

 IT'S NOT A SIGN

The commonest fallacy of which I am aware and contend with almost daily is the idea that if you can write your name, you are literate - a sign of literacy.  This is not the case.  One of the more lugubrious actions by our court system was increasing the written guilty plea form from two pages to nine pages with many lines for signatures and boxes for check marks, etc.  

The assumption by those responsible for the new guilty plea form must be that the information on these nine pages is important and the people for whom it is meant, meaning defendants, will read and acknowledge that they have carefully read the nine pages of typewritten material to which they have entered check marks, initialed, or otherwise acknowledged.  In the minds of the originators, it is important that the defendant understand what the defendant is doing.         

The assumption referenced in the last paragraph has no basis in reality and the source of it must have been the collective imagination of a panel or conference or some other gathering of legal minds interested in protecting the rights and privileges of the people we represent as criminal defense attorneys.  

The vocabulary of a typical defendant does not exceed a thousand words and the ability to correctly spell those thousand words does not exist.  Some would say, that if this is so, it is the responsibility of the attorney to ensure that defendants understand what they are signing in some other manner such as verbally.  This is simply wishful thinking; it is not possible.

The fact is defendants do not know what they are signing other than a plea of guilty to some charge for which their attorney has told  them it is the best deal available - "you're not getting a better offer".  This is the situation whether the defendant is required to read the document being presented or it is verbally read by the attorney.  The idea that comprehension occurs is an absurdity.

Most defendants, the staggering majority, when asked what the sentence was for which they were placed on a current probation can not tell you.  They know they are on probation and have to report to a probation officer.  They also know their discharge date.  This is the limit of the knowledge the typical probationer has.  It is all that matters - - when do I get off probation?

So let's be real here.  The typical defendants are not literate but are able to sign their name to a document to indicate that they are.  They are in fact lying to the court when they attest that they have read and understand what they were to have read and the court recognizes that they are lying as does the defense attorney and the prosecutor and the court reporter and all who may witness the transaction.  It is an accepted practice and a necessary one.

One last caveat: If you are or have been a defendant who actually reads this, don't get in a toot; acknowledge the fact you are an exception.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo